Intel and Foxconn Collaborate on Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure and Intelligent Computing Platforms Including Financial Outlook and Xeon 6 Plus Launch
Intel and Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn will partner to develop and deploy the next wave of artificial intelligence infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms. Both companies will bring together silicon technology with contract manufacturing and supply chain strengths to address the increasing global demand for AI hardware. The announcement was made at Computex Taipei.
Wall Street reacted positively to the announcement and Intel shares rose by 4.43 percent, closing at $112.71. Analysts have been increasing their estimates for Intel. Mizuho boosted its target price on Intel to $128 from $124. Wells Fargo set a price target for the stock at $110, up from $85 and Barclays also boosted its rating on the chip maker, setting a price target at $100 from $65. The financial terms of the collaboration are not publicly available. Intel and Foxconn have yet to announce customers or release any shipping dates.
The collaborative engineering roadmap will primarily look at hardware for data centers focused on artificial intelligence. Intel and Foxconn will build server racks to integrate with Intel Xeon chips, along with dedicated AI accelerator chips. Technical teams at both companies will also work on high speed interconnect technologies, high density liquid cooling designs and efficient power solutions necessary for demanding AI tasks.
Beyond data centers, both companies will also work on edge AI deployments for factories, smart cities and robotics. Both companies will explore custom silicon designs, along with integrated systems designed to perform machine learning calculations on premises. Foxconn's Chairman, Young Liu said:
"This partnership brings together strengths that only Intel and Foxconn can combine leadership in the computing platforms and mastery over the global supply chain."
At Computex, Intel announced the latest in the company's line of Xeon 6 Plus processors. The silicon will be made using the 18A manufacturing process, which will allow it to have up to 288 efficiency cores on a single chip. This hardware will be designed to address large scale, data center, agentic software, and AI inference workloads. The announcement was intended to promote corporate adoption of up to date server infrastructure.
